El Psy Congroo

I've been looking into the John Titor story a lot the last few days and it led me to watch the
Steins;Gate anime. Be warned this post will contain serious spoilers.
Steins;Gate is set in 2010 and involves an organization called SERN (aka CERN), it also has a character based on John Titor, and an IBN 5100 PC (aka
IBM 5100). It is truly a very fascinating anime that deals with the concept of time travel in a multiverse where anything and everything is happening
somewhere, as proposed by Titor.

They start off using a simple machine that can send mobile (cellular) text messages to a phone in the past, provided you know the number for the
phone. Then they created a time machine which allowed them to save a persons memories (as information), then they somehow used the LHC to generate a
mini-blackhole to compress the memory data and then literally plant those memories into your past self. So your mind essentially gets transmitted into
the mind of yourself in the past. At the end they use a full fledged time machine (get in it and go) but they didn't create it, it came from the year
2036.

As I watched this show I was fascinated by the complex concepts involved. It was interesting to see how Titors time line theory might work, and it
gave me a chance to look for flaws in the concept. It seems they did pretty well in writing a story about time travel that made sense. However, there
are a few things which they either didn't account for or just simply ignored. For instance when the main character sends his memories back in time
it's unlikely that he would suddenly disappear, but that's the impression I got.

If proposition #1 is correct it means that each time the main character uses a time machine to get himself out of a sticky situation, all he's
actually doing is creating another time line on which that situation no longer has the chance to manifest. He isn't erasing entire time lines to fix
the problems. He's simply creating new ones, but those new ones don't affect the present time line. It wouldn't even appear to work unless you
transmitted physical matter, only the person in the past who received the memories or text message would know it worked.

Proposition #1 - splitting a time line

The moment something from the future enters the past is when the time line gets split. It doesn't get split when you tread on a bug or when you kill
your own father. Your mere presence in the past is a change to that timeline, thus it must split from the original. The same thing applies for any
information sent to the past. The presence of that information in a time where it didn't normally exist is in fact a change.

Problem #1 - what's actually changing?

If proposition #1 is correct, then it wouldn't it be practical to send a text, or memories, or yourself, into the past. You could send the information
(or yourself) into the past, but doing so would cause the time line to split at the exact date and time the information entered the past. It stands to
reason that the change would only affect the new time line, but the original one would remain the same.

Proposition #2 - infinite sea of potential

There is an infinite or near infinite amount of time lines with endless differences and it's impossible to tell how your actions may fracture the time
line ahead of you. Thus you can't be sure of exactly where you came from if the path(s) which you followed to get to the past are now rearranged and
altered in a way that can't be monitored or referenced with anything else.

Problem #2 - where did I come from?

If proposition #2 is correct it means that once leaving your own time line the chances of getting back to your original time line would be virtually
nil unless you had a device which could specifically tune in to certain time lines. This isn't a paradox but it is a problem. The only practical way
to tell if you've entered back into your original time line is if you are missing from that time line.

Please note that problem #2 is not really a problem with the integrity of the time line theory, but it would be a problem for any time traveler that
wanted to make sure they could get back to where they came from. Once you leave home you better be prepared to get yourself tangled in a complex web
of time lines with people who might appear to be your original friends and family, but there's no real way to tell. Even if you are missing in that
time line there's more than one reason you could be missing.

Attractor Field Convergence

This is a theory presented in Steins;Gate, I'm not sure if Titor mentioned it in real life. Apparently many time lines share the same future state,
but the events leading up to the shared state are different. These common time lines form a "time rope". A rope is made up of many threads all winding
and weaving around each other. Each thread goes from the start to the finish of the rope, but every thread takes a different route to get there.
Common destination; different path.

If this theory is correct it would suggest that there are points in the overall time line structure where multiple paths converge into the same time
line. There may in fact be singularity points in time where multiple time lines simultaneously reach a shared state and "fuse" into one time line, one
reality. The time-wave zero theory shows indications that 2012 may contain a large time singularity. It's possible that our time line converges with
others quite frequently, but on a smaller scale (deja vu could be memories of your alternative self).

Yeah, it is interesting to think about creating different 'world lines', but it is a work of fiction after all. I highly doubt one could really be
able to send their memories or text messages to the past.

As for the concepts presented. They were unrealistic and were hand waved for the most part. Still incredibly fun.

Yeah well I partially agree with you on that. They did alright with the whole time line concept, but the devices they built and how they
worked was a bit vague and unrealistic. Probably because the writers didn't actually know how to build a time machine. And they also need to keep it
relatively simple. I mean they were still talking about kerr blackholes and things like that. The whole "Attractor Field Convergence" thing also seems
like a vague reference to something like the attractors in chaos theory. The way they explained it seems to slot in well with the time wave zero
theory actually, I'm pretty sure TWZ math is based on chaos theory too.

Its a book. On the computer. There is no gameplay. Its almost exactly like watching an anime except you sometime get to choose the actions. Which
branches the story. There are no animated scenes, but images that show up to give it more character.

The anime is an adaption of the Visual Novel(VN), it only covers one route of the story. To experience all plot twist, explanations, endings, and
character interactions you need to read the VN.

The anime is an adaption of the Visual Novel(VN), it only covers one route of the story. To experience all plot twist, explanations, endings, and
character interactions you need to read the VN.

Do I really need to confuse myself more than I already have?

Just watching him go through all those time lines made me feel nauseous.
I'm not used to a style of story where the characters are never really the same characters (apart from the main dude). Problem #2 could do major
psychological damage.

Oh man I missed this anime, I only ran into it because somebody mentioned it on a new thread about a supposed time traveler named John Titor. Its
this thread...Linky ...It got moved into the hoax bin pretty fast to, and it was only
a chance that somebody mentioned they made an anime called steins gate which has a character in it of the same name, ie this John Titor everybody was
always going on about on this site.

Personally I never read any of his threads or ran into into them, but the anime they made is spot on and highly entertaining and freaking funny, its
pegged a lot of things from the nets and this site as well, on some things it even makes me wonder and ponder of the hilarity of it all and how some
things reverberate world wide, it does bring a grin to my face sometimes how some things sprout out from mere words on some random threads most times
done at a whim.

If anything the anime its pretty intuitive and enjoyable, but so far I am on episode 4. So I only read half your thread as I did not want any
spoilers. If anything watching the anime made me more curious on who Titor is and what he was about then all the random posts I ran into which brought
his name and this whole time travel business into it. Personally I dont necessarily believe in time travel, because I dont necessarily believe in
time, even though I believe time is a necessity.

I cant necessarily comment on your breaking down of the concepts and precepts of time travel in the anime as i did not watch it fully yet and as I did
not want to ruin my experience of it by reading your propositions of its flaws on the concepts of time.

It is a conundrum I know, to so fully be in this interference and annoyance, and how would you debunk something that you do not yet want to debunk,
maybe at a latter date I can comment on it. But today its not prudent to step outside the prospects of something that is, to something that could be,
without an in between filter on the whole subject, I do believe it would be called cheating.

Oh ya and you cant have a Japanese anime without cat girls, thought cats are not as in style as they were some years ago, they still are seen
lurking on the Internets once in a while, though there craving for cheeseburgers has dimmed somewhat. Watching the anime its like taking a trip back
to 2009 internet meme lingo limbo fueled by long nights of cup of noodles and cheese puffs.

I would say that the whole timelines thing, or at least in that show is on a closed loop. Every single thing they did influenced and kicked off the
next one, even the whole "Hououin Kyouma" ie El Psy Congroo thing got started because it was needed to complete the loop and storyline. Basically
the show started were it ended, and it ended were it started, the beginning and the end, the alpha and omega time loops which kicked it all off were
one and the same, ie the whole thing is in a time loop all across different divergences leading in to itself kick starting itself again ad infinitum.

It is a story after all.

Proposition #1 - splitting a time line

I am not so sure about that, maybe nothing changed, maybe there is no change if you look at it from the outside. Look at it this way, which is the
real or original timeline? The truth is that there seems to be no original timeline, so if there is no original then it just becomes a question of
which timeline you would want to reside in. How would you even know when a difference took place? Who's to say whats important and what not? For
all we know every single meaningless and trivial thing we do or exists could create a divergent line. There could be an infinite number of them to
the point that it becomes meaningless to keep track of them.

Problem #1 - what's actually changing?

The whole premise of changing time means that there is some overall scheme to it and its set pretty much in stone, ie there is no free will. And if
you could go back into to time, or text back into time, or send thoughts and experiences back into time. That means you would have stepped out of time
itself. You could literally go back and repeat a bunch of things differently, but your still stuck withing the limits of that time and place. Hence
the whole groundhogs day effect. So the only arbiter of change is you, and you would be the only one who would know it, to everybody and everything
else it would be just what it always has been. So there really is nothing that is changing but your perception of it.

Proposition #2 - infinite sea of potential

It could be infinite but only if you count all the minute details in the whole world and in the whole of the worlds. But in actuality its a closed
loop that leads into itself again and again. Most especially because it needs to tell a story, its a show after all.

Problem #2 - where did I come from?

I dont think there is an original time line were you came from that you would be able to go back and say that was me. Once you stepped outside of
time, you have in essence kind of like gone behind the scenes of a play or a concert, everything is always in the moment, and past and present is the
illusion of continuity. So no matter which timeline you step into you would always be in the present, just like before you would have stepped outside
of your original timeline. But in reality you have only become aware of it, so it would be like anything else it would just branch off and become part
of the whole. I suppose its like all the rivers crisscrossing the planet, they all eventually lead to the ocean.

So what I am saying is that there is no original you, or original timeline, or original world you belonged in, or original divergence. There is only
the you that you are aware of, the timeline you were aware of, the world you were aware of, and the divergence you were aware off. That is all there
is to it, its like light hitting a prism, it just splits off into different vibrations, and if your on the outside you can see that it did so and
watch all the pretty colors of the rainbow. But all those colors are actually the same thing, you have just split it so as to focus on its minute
details.

So the whole attractor field conference thing could just be because of the fact its all part of a greater whole, and when something splits up,
something else must split up or rearrange itself to complete it, or complete the over all whole again, and really the minute details do not matter so
much, and in this case the minute changes and details could be whole lives even whole worlds. The real insanity would be not if you were aware of it,
but if you are aware of it. The whole "Reading Steiner" thing would literally be like squeezing an orange through the eye of a needle, you would
quite literally go insane, like short-circuiting a wire with to much voltage it would either blow or fizz out. And like everything else in the
show, it was named that because it means nothing.

Thinking about it further. It is more likely and more feasible that you would be able to send texts or memories through time then a real actual
person. And if you think about it, what are texts and what are memories or thought, there all just data. You can transmit data from long distances
even across the universe in various manners, a phone does that, a satellite does that, even a picture camera does that, even the internet does that,
light itself is just data, and so is matter in its various forms. So yes probably sending a text message back in time would be more likely then
anything else, and memories also, because what is the brain but a biocomputer and what are memories but just data expressed and ie decompressed and
interpreted in that biocomputer.

The whole outlook we have on time in relation to matter seems to be way off. There was some theorys years ago about how you can not physically travel
back in time because the whole world, or the whole universe is like a fishbowl, every single atom in your body may have been used before in different
configurations in the universe, but the things its made off also existed since the beginning. So if you somehow end up back in time, in the same place
and space, as soon as you step outside the time machine. You would explode like a balloon, or like adding one more object into the fishbowl, the water
would reach the top and start to pour over when the mass of the object all of a sudden displaces the water that is there.

In essence no matter what you do it would expel you out somehow, kind of how like no matter what . Which again means that this whole thing is set in
stone from the start, kind of how like no matter how many times and in how many ways Okabe saved Mayuri she eventually just ended up dying in
different way. Not to mention that if you somehow came here from the future you would be completely lost, even in something so simple as the customs
and regulations or way of life.

The conference field is basically the gravity of time, it works on many levels and all levels necessary. Its even in nature, if you take a wild animal
from its natural habitat, and stick it in another it will eventually end up dieing. The same goes with fishes, when you change there fishbowls, and
its the same with humans. Even if yo were to somehow bring somebody from the 10th century here to the future, there life would not likely be a good
one, there would be untold things they would have to adjust to, the shock alone would probably depress them to the point of suicide, and left on there
own there would be no way they would be able to survive in this century no more then if we somehow send somebody from this century to life in the 10th
century. The chances for survival are slim even in that.

In essence the whole concept of time is a child's dream. It does not exist, there is no different versions of us, there is only us in different
versions in different fishbowls, and outside of that we do not exist, kind of how water liquid water does not exist outside certain temperatures, it
may exist as ice, but its still not water as we know it. The same could be said of humans and everything else in all of existence, its all just
different stages of matter. We do not necessarily life and we do not die, we merely change and reconfigure. If there is a god or an outside force our
life's in any timeline would be no different and have about as much meaning as the different states of water would have to us.

In that case the most likely thing is that data or information is the only thing that you can send through time. So far we have just only learned how
to send it forward, and everything in society was created to ensure that, its what history is, and what history books are, but a form of compressed
data somebody tried to send forward in time, its what words are, and every concept out there from religion to politics to daily things to morals to
even physical items is derived from that fact. But you should be able to send data back in time as well I suppose, maybe you could text back to
yourself back some months or days or years, but you would need to know all the details of were and even if you had a phone back then. But in all on
the whole time travel thing, its much more phesable that you could somehow send data back in time then a whole person.

Even in the anime they could only send 36 terabytes of data back in time even using the stable sern black hole that they had in the anime. A whole
human if you think about it, and if matter and energy is data, then there is more data in the fingernail of a humans body then there is in a whole
library, in fact if you could produce DNA to hold other data you would have effectively gotten rid of today's technologies, you may be able to hold
hundreds of books on a single hardrive and then some, but if were based on dna, you could hold the whole history of everything ever written and every
single book in all the libraries in the world, and all in the palm of your hand. So ya you would get jellyfied even if you somehow ended up going
through a black hole, and somehow ended up back in time like they did in the anime, it would be to much data trying to squeeze through. But at 36
terabytes of data, in specific ways you can do a lot, and if you can figure out the mental makeup of the human mind to brain operations, you can even
send data back in time into peoples heads to some degree. Though they probably just end up going crazy if and when it actually happened.

Thought it becomes quite obvious that time is just that a concept not a real physical thing, merely another software attached to a hardware. And
there were some other thoughts I had on this whole time thing concept, and the Steins Gate anime. But I forgot them now.

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